Dates / Schedules
Saturday, 14 march 2026 3:30 pm to 6:00 pm
The Barber Shop presents: Acid Communism, thinking about the common from Mark Fisher
At the exhibition Avenida 211: An Artists’ Space in Lisbon
In this session dedicated to Mark Fisher’s Acid Communism, the project space The Barber Shop revisits one of the central theorists of its programme through lectures by Aleksandra Odette Kypriotaki and Miguel Cardoso, and a sound performance by Polido.
Mark Fisher (1968–2017) was a British cultural theorist, author, prolific blogger (known as K-Punk), and lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University, London. Also a former member of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) and the founder of Zero Books, he is known for his influential work on neoliberalism, music, and mental health, most notably in his books Capitalist Realism, Ghosts of My Life, and The Weird and the Eerie.
Mark Fisher’s legacy marked a generation of writers and theorists, and his unfinished book project Acid Communism aims to revive the utopian potential of psychedelic counterculture to imagine a future beyond capitalist realism. It proposes fusing class consciousness with psychedelic consciousness to break with capitalist, neoliberal, and patriarchal regimes, and in doing so it keeps inspiring new horizons for collectivity.
This event is curated by Margarida Mendes, director of The Barber Shop (2009–2016), a project space dedicated to transdisciplinary artistic research originally located in the Avenida 211 building.
For about seven years, The Barber Shop project space hosted artists, philosophers, musicians, and curators to present their investigations in an intimate and exploratory way. It functioned as a small cultural embassy, opening doors to contemporary discourses on art society, and stimulating intersectional dialogue about the conditions of the world.
Conversation in English.
💻 Free admission with prior registration through the form or servico.educativo.museu@ccb.pt.
The Centro Cultural de Belém Foundation reserves the right to collect, store and use recordings of image, sound and voice, for the purposes of dissemination and for preserving the memory of its cultural and artistic activities, as well as its spaces. Should you require any further information, please contact us at the following email address: privacidade@ccb.pt
Biographies
Aleksanda Odette Kypriotaki was born and raised in Crete by Egyptian-Lebanese and Cretan parents. She worked as a journalist for some of the largest media in Greece, and in 2010 she re-invented herself while working closely with her tutor, Mark Fisher, and cohort on the MA in Visual Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London. After living at a commune in the desert, Kypriotaki’s life started revolving around collective structures of being. Back in Crete, she has engaged in the creation of various collectives: the Apo Koinou cooperative and the school Paidokipos. In recent years, she has been inquiring how births can be understood in a political context, a topic which has become one of main interests of her personal research. A while ago, she quit her job in order to pick up writing again and swim in the sea in the mornings.
Miguel Cardoso lives in Lisbon, where he was born. He translates often, teaches sometimes, writes when he can. His most recent translations include Garments Against Women by Anne Boyer (Cutelo, 2025) and Correspondence with Jacques Rivière by Antonin Artaud (Tigre de Papel, 2024). He teaches in the DocNomads – Joint Master’s Degree in Documentary Film (Universidade Lusófona). In addition to essays and other scattered texts, he has published nine books of poetry. The most recent are Quando Onde (with Maria Lis; Tigre de Papel, 2023) and Passageiros (Cutelo, 2025).
Polido is a multidisciplinary musician and artist from Marinha Grande. Anchored in a materialist approach to sound, his vocabulary is composed of personal recordings and samples. From the processing of this raw material, Polido constructs surreal narratives for concrete spaces. His work moves along the axis of the history of Portuguese music, cultural memory, and sociopolitical phenomena, in search of a threshold between the recognition and alienation of these forms. Polido runs the embryonic publishing house Projecto de Vida, and his music has been released under the labels Holuzam, ANA, Bus Editions, and Lynn.
Margarida Mendes is a research-based artist, curator, and educator, exploring the overlap between critical ecology, experimental film, sound practices, and eco-pedagogy. She creates transdisciplinary forums, exhibitions, discursive events, and experiential works where alternative modes of education and sensing practices may catalyse political imagination and restorative action. Margarida Mendes was part of the curatorial team of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, the 11th Liverpool Biennale, and the 3rd Porto Design Biennale, and has founded and co-directed several educational platforms, such as escuelita at CA2M-Madrid, the Matter in Flux ecological study group, and The Barber Shop project space in Lisbon, dedicated to transdisciplinary research. Margarida Mendes holds a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a tutor on the GEO-Design Masters at Design Academy Eindhoven and an affiliated researcher at ICNOVA, University of Lisbon.